The Night of Long Knives Paperback Cover 1973

Don Ivan Punchatz made this paperback cover, ‘The Night of Long Knives’, with paint and probably brushes too. The way Punchatz models and shades is interesting - it’s like the whole image is in service to a sort of grisly, fleshy realism. It's like the paint is just there to say "This is real." The bodies are so well-rendered, and then stuck together, one falling out behind the other. Take a look at the blood here; it's not splashed or stylized, but looks almost like it's been carefully dripped and daubed with tiny brushstrokes. The whole thing has this strange tension between the real and the totally unbelievable. It's a tricky balance to pull off, but Punchatz manages to make it work. Punchatz was part of a group of illustrators doing a lot of this sort of thing. It makes me think of the work of Robert Hunt in the seventies. Like this it’s a reminder that the language of painting is always up for grabs, always ready to be reinterpreted.